Desktop support to programming

Question

I am looking for some help here. I have 5 years experience in desktop support and a number of desktop support certifications (MCP A++ MCDST etc), but I am going back to the University for a Computer Science degree (I have one degree in Marketing now), so what I am looking for is a bit of advice:

1. How is the best way to move from desktop support roles to a development role.
2. I am 33 years old, so is this total carrier change? I know there can be a cultural divide between the two groups.

thanks for any advice.**

Answer 1

There are at least 3 different ways I could see for an answer to the first one, where one factor is what trade-offs do you prefer:

1) Small company where you'd handle various roles. This is where while you may have a development role title, there would be a chunk of your job that is handling things from an IT perspective like setting up servers and networks as you would be one of the few IT people in the company.

2) Transition to test and then development. Taking your desktop support experience and interest in fixing problems, migrate to something a bit closer to code to eventually transition into one of the developers. This may not be easy to find but is likely to be the best in terms of salary initially.

3) Start over again from scratch. If you don't want to use your previous experiences at all, this is the route to take. Granted you'd be going for junior positions and possibly be undervalued, it is what you may want to do if you want to be a developer and nothing but a developer.

As you can see, this can be viewed as a few different transitions, and thus not necessarily that big a cultural divide, at least to my mind.

Answer 2

If you're going to do a Computer Science degree, do a software engineering course or some other paper that is known to have a large programming project. If you don't have any other significant samples of programming work, make sure you really nail this project so you can use it to demonstrate your programming ability.

Answer 3

First decide for yourself what you want to do. What are you passionate about? If it is coding then go for it. Start working on a project (either open-source or your own). Don't worry about certifications that much. They might be good in IT world but they are not as useful when you are a developer. What matters is experience. That's why rather then going to school (I am not saying it is a bad idea) start coding today!

Answer 4

I'd suggest using your new-found coding skills to automate desktop support activities. For example, write snazzy deployment scripts in Ruby or Groovy or Python, or write a web interface so your users can view support response graphs or system uptime stats.

You get to develop your coding skills, while continuing to be useful, and gaining assets you can use to show off your ability.

Use these to demonstrate your coding ability to your current employer, reference them in your resume, use them as code samples when interviewing.